How invasive is the voice remote, and can it be turned off?

Dear Community, we are debating replacing our older Roku with a new one, we love Roku!  However it looks like they now feature voice activated remotes.  I'm sure this is a selling point for some but I have privacy concerns.  Does anybody know if this thing is listening the way your typical smart speaker does (meaning that recordings of your voice are uploaded through the internet to a company's servers)?  Or does it just control the Roku device locally and what you say is not sent up to the mothership and kept forever?  I have just updated my voice preferences to "off" under settings here on the Roku site so I think it gets sent up via the internet but just checking.  Also how easily can voice activation be turned off and does it stay off? 

To each their own but I personally think the phones are effective enough at reducing our privacy to almost zero.  Why bring another listening device into your living room or bedroom? Is it really that hard to operate a remote?  Thanks, -Matt